


Just In Case

by LondonLioness



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, PTSD Sherlock, Starvation, Torture, food hoarding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-30
Updated: 2019-05-30
Packaged: 2020-03-29 16:25:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,427
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19023592
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LondonLioness/pseuds/LondonLioness
Summary: Sherlock's partway through with his bowl of soup when it occurs to him he ought to save the rest, because...Because?There's no finish to that thought, just a gnawing anxiety that has him scouting through his flat. He wedges the bowl in the corner of the sofa, arranges cushions over it.There. Hidden.Safe.





	Just In Case

**Author's Note:**

> So if you know my work, you know one of my biggest complaints about Moftiss is they assume something like torture can have basically no aftereffects. I don't buy it. Here's a story that fell out of my pen when I started wondering, what if the torture included starvation? What might the aftereffects be?
> 
> Enjoy!

Starvation as a torture method has never impressed Sherlock. After all, he routinely goes days at a time without eating, by choice. Surely, his captors' withholding food would be ineffective. 

What he never appreciated, though, is the difference between _hungry_ and _starving._ It's been over two weeks with nothing but small sips of water in his stomach, and he is _starving._ Every cell in his body is screaming with emptiness. 

As bad as that is, it's worse when they eat in front of him. They set up a table just out of his reach and bring in platters of food. There is roast chicken, potatoes, boats of gravy, tiny herbed carrots, bread and butter. Wine is poured; coffee served. Thick slabs of cake for dessert. With his hands shackled, he can't wipe the drool off his chin and some of it hangs in a sticky rope down to his chest. When his interrogator brings over a toothpick-sized sliver of chicken and places it in his mouth, he almost weeps with gratitude. 

"You can have more, you know," he croons. "Just tell us who you're working for, and you can have as much as you want." 

But he can't do that. He tucks the little wisp of chicken between his molars and chews and chews and chews. 

  


By the time Mycroft rescues him, he is very weak. For the first few days, he is fed through a tube. When he is strong enough, they give him porridge for his first solid food. 

Sherlock hates porridge. 

He licks the bowl clean. 

  


Home again, 221B Baker St., and everything is perfect. Well, except for that whole dust-up with John, but he expects that will sort itself out by and by. Right now, though, he's _home,_ and Mrs. Hudson has brought up a pot of tea and five homemade chocolate biscuits. He eats two and sets two aside to eat at bedtime, but the last one presents a conundrum. Holding the biscuit, he scouts through the flat, not quite sure what he's looking for. Finally, he pushes the curtain aside, swipes most of the dust off the windowsill, places the biscuit on the windowsill, replaces the curtain. 

There. Perfectly hidden. 

He's being silly, he knows. Nobody's going to steal his biscuit, and even if they do, he can always get more. 

He leaves the biscuit there. 

Just in case. 

  


Lunch, the next day. He's two-thirds done with his bowl of soup, when it occurs to him he should save the rest of it, because... 

Because? 

There's really no finish to that thought, just a sudden, gnawing anxiety that has him scouting through the flat again. He wedges the bowl in the corner of the sofa, arranges cushions over it. 

There. Hidden. 

Safe. 

  


It becomes the new normal, saving a third to half of each meal and hiding. it. Half a pizza gets slid under the DVD player. Left-over Chinese takeaway is tucked behind the cleaning products under the bathroom sink. Billy the skull stands guard over half a ham sandwich. 

  


The flat starts to smell bad. He doesn't care. 

  


He opens his sock drawer one day to find the plate of roast beef/potatoes/gravy/peas he'd secreted there swarming with maggots. Nauseating. He grabs it to throw it away, but then he notices some bits by the edge that just might be edible in a pinch. 

He leaves it in the drawer. 

  


Wedding planning is the project of the hour, and John and Mary come over. John wrinkles his nose and demands to know just what godawful experiment he's working on now. 

Sherlock tells him truthfully it involves mould. 

  


The next day, they're back. In the course of the day, Mary decides she would like an extra cushion and grabs one from the corner of the sofa, exposing the bowl of soup. 

Actually, it's ex-soup now. It's a bowl of odiferous, fuzzy, grey-green sludge. 

Mary gags. "I guess I just found the experiment," she says in a strangled voice. She grabs it to take it away. 

Sherlock panics. "Where are you taking that?" he demands. "Put it back, it was safe there." 

"Safe?" Mary echoes. 

"Fine. It was fine." 

"Sherlock, this is not staying in the same room as me," Mary says firmly, and shoulders past him to put it in the kitchen. 

Sherlock stands there, stunned. Personal boundaries have always been a tricky concept for him. He's pretty sure it's rude to handle other people's things. So why is it OK for Mary to take his soup away? He needs that soup to be where he put it, damn it! 

John and Mary are staring at him with shocked expressions, and he realises he spoke out loud. He pelts off to the bedroom and locks the door behind him. He falls to his knees and wraps his long arms around himself, trying to keep himself from flying apart. God, this is a disaster! He can't breathe; why can't he breathe? He's so preoccupied with trying to pull air into his lungs he doesn't register the knocking, nor the soft snicks that testify to John Watson's powers of observation vis-a-vis the use of lock picks. Then, suddenly, John's there, and he's breathing with him, and that helps a little. After a while, he can breathe again, and feel his body again, and see properly again. He sees John wearing a gentle smile, but it doesn't reach his eyes, and there are worry lines on his forehead. 

"Sherlock, come with me," he coaxes. He follows John out into the sitting room, and what he sees there sets him reeling. 

They've ruined _everything_. Just about everything he'd managed to save is piled in a malodorous heap on the coffee table. "Why did you do this?" he gasps. 

"I think the question is, why did you?" John replies gently, and he recognizes that tone. It's the tone his family uses when they pack him off to rehab, only he hasn't been using, so that can't be it. 

"You had no right," Sherlock persists. 

"Maybe not," John agrees, "but this has to be cleaned up. You're going to get sick." 

"No. No, I'm fine; it's all fine. I was...saving that." 

"For what?" John asks, mystified. "You can't eat it." 

"I know." And he does know, looking at it, God, it's disgusting. But still... "It's ... just in case," he explains weakly. 

John stares at him, horrified. "While you were away," he muses. "You went hungry, didn't you?" Oh, there is so much compassion in his voice, it almost undoes him. He wants to pitch forward, bury his face in John's jumper and sob out the whole story. But John must never, ever, know about the torture, so he cobbles together a story about getting stranded in a foreign city with no money and no way to make his next contact. He describes begging, and eating scraps out of skips. These details come easily because he really had lived that life years ago, when his addiction was raging. He finishes by saying that after being off the radar for several weeks, MI6 sent an agent to find him, and the mission proceeded. "As long as the mission was on, I didn't think of it," he concludes, "but ever since I got home, every time I eat, I feel like I need to put some of it aside...just in case." 

"Oh, Sherlock," Mary murmurs, and wraps him in a soft hug, which he tolerates. 

"I'm sorry," John breathes, "but it does have to be cleaned up, and I know that's going to be excruciating for you. And then we have to talk about therapy. This kind of anxiety is very treatable, but you will need help." 

"I'll talk to Mycroft about it." Seeing John's confusion, he adds, "Classified mission. Requires a therapist with an appropriate security clearance." Suddenly he just wants this over. "Right. Let's clean." 

  


He doesn't talk to Mycroft. 

  


He spends two days in his mind palace, doing an exhaustive sort and dump of every minute of his mission in Serbia. When he comes out, the compulsion to hoard food is gone. 

  


Life goes on. There is a wedding to plan, cases to solve, experiments to do. 

  


Occasionally, there is the prick of a needle. 

  


He doesn't let himself think of it often, but he takes some solace in the fact no one ever looked behind the curtain. That first biscuit had been joined, gradually, by 19 others, so he has a stash of 20 biscuits on the windowsill. 

  


Just in case. 

  
-Fin-

**Author's Note:**

> So he avoids therapy but doesn't quite escape all the consequences of being so badly mistreated. I just didn't think it was realistic to make him all better now. Let me know your thoughts, I shamelessly admit I live for comments! And kudos, lots of kudos...


End file.
